KV upgrade

Tags

EQ2, World of Tanks

Now, I have the 152 mm gun and my KV looks more like a real KV :

Deadly Now

My only match I played it in was Malinovka, where I tried the south-side strategy of drawing shots from the leftmost building.     The Lowe that charged us one-shotted me through the window.

Going to research the 76mm next which has a decent rate of fire (15/min) unlike this gun (2.7/min), but much less damage potential.   Plenty of guns to try out on this tank, but I’m going to go after the rest of the T5 guns before researching the T7 107mm with very high penetration.

And with the last month being spent playing EQ2 so minimally, I have just cancelled my subscription – it will run out 3/22.    Looking like this will free me to buy more gold in WoT and perhaps get another month premium subscription.    If I mostly log in to the game to keep my research going, why am I paying $15 for the privilege ? And it seems I’ve extracted the maximum fun from the game.    Now if only I can “force” myself to get Tez and Tlaloc up to 90…….

Month End Update

Tags

EQ2, Nightclub City, Star Trek Online, World of Tanks

End of month update.

Nightclub City : Continuing to expand the existing clubs, still playing, not a lot has changed since this post.   Never received a reply to my request for a refund on facebook credits.

Star Trek Online :   Still advancing a bit in this one.    Seems I log in long enough to work duty officers, then log off again.    And I’m missing some nights.     There’s no rush, the game is fantastic, and there’s no reason to pay money to them.

Support eventually got back to me and confirmed that Cryptics are not shared if they are rewards; cash-backed Cryptics are.    Thanks for giving me that at least.

Everquest 2 : After frantically reaching level 89, I began to work on clearing out the quests in Tez’s quest log.    After several nights of doing so, he’s at 49% towards 90 and holding.    The thing about doing pinked-out quests, is they award much more AA XP than regular.    Worked through a fun set of Barren Sky quests about missing fae and arasai brothers and sisters – ended up with a reward that lets me shape change into a Fae.    Keeping that one !

Currently working on a few things in Kylong Plains and logged out last night having started the “Fistful of Metal” quest.     Tlaloc is a level 85 provisioner and still moving up.

World of Tanks : Starting to rack up the games again, at over 6200 right now.    It’s a bit slower going without premium, but I have so many tanks all I need to really do is concentrate on getting daily doubles – and play extra matches when I’m doing well with any particular tank.    Have managed to bring a few elite tanks up over 100% of crew skills, and moved forward on eliting more tanks.

• My T29 is at 27k towards the big gun – the 105mm.    I need about 41k.
• A few more matches and I get the big derp gun for the KV.
• My Tiger now has the ugraded turret and guns, working towards upgraded engine.

Am looking forward to the 7.2 update which should come around the end of March.   Crew skill options sound like a lot of fun.    Should open up the play for my MS-1 once again !      There is currently a sale on heavy tanks, but I’m not going to buy anything this time due to both lack of credits and a surfeit of tanks in my garage.    And finally, the World of Tanks Assistant, aka Android app, is now available.     If you’ll excuse me, time to download it and get a good look at it.

Edit :

Forgot one extra metric I’ve decided to track – just how much (or how little) am I blowing on games each month ?     February is just the $15 fee for EQ2.    That fits with where I want to be – low cost entertainment !

Game Support – Good and Bad

Tags

EQ2, Star Trek Online

I’m following the controversy over the ProSiebeinSat.1 deal.    No, gentle reader, this is not the name of the latest virus, but the company which SOE is apparently selling all European operations to – and that means *you*, if you play on a European server.   Eq2wire has the best coverage.

All I can see is a community united in opposition to this deal.    When I say united, I mean 100%.    No players want to see this go through.   Clearly it’s a very bad idea then, even if I’m ambivalent as a lone-wolf style EQ2 player.

I mean – they banned Feldon.    He runs a massively important fansite for EQ2.    And they banned him for pretty mild language.   Somebody is screwing up big time.

But this did not keep me from logging in and moving forward.   Tez has gotten to 70% XP towards 89, and continues through the Stonebrunt mountains.    Trying to work the heritage quest “Digging in the Dirt” among others.    I am definitely not playing like I used to – I really did approach this game more like a job in past years.

What was I thinking ?    Now I can simply relax and enjoy myself.    Getting a bit tired or bored ?   Log off !   Don’t worry about falling behind, just have fun !    World of Tanks and STO continue to get some playtime even if there’s not much to write.     And that’s the way it should be – concentrate on enjoying yourself.

But if you think SOE support is bad – try Perfect World.   Sony is communicating about the ProSieben debacle at least; they hear the complaints and cancellations; the result isn’t necessarily good, but the communication is Excellent.   Then there’s Perfect World.    I submitted a ticket a full *TWO WEEKS AGO*.   My ticket is still open; no response, no information, nothing has been added to it.    Someone is looking at it however – they keep clicking some “updated” box.

What the hell is that supposed to mean ?   They’ve posted no response.    I probably got the solution from Bhagpuss posting on my blog; all I asked was for someone to confirm it.

When Oracle Application support starts looking more responsive then your game, you have epic-level-bad support.

Home Stretch

Tags

EQ2, World of Tanks

EQ2 saw a night of finishing up quests, and grinding mobs for awhile, until Tez reached level 88 and 40% XP.    Now I’m on the home stretch of this race.   Finally tried out the travel stations as well, and got a look at quite the epic mob wandering around out in the open, ready to stomp an unsuspecting soloer.

I don't think I should get any closer.

I was really enjoying stomping on the Stonebrunt mobs.    The skeletal displacer beasts, the shadowmen teamed with kobolds, and the big old spiders were enjoyable.   It didn’t hurt that I continued to complete a repeatable quest for some few thousand bonus XP each time.   At 10 minutes until the 2x bonus expiration I logged off for the night.     Turns out I still have a few quests to complete in the area.    Despite my claims yesterday, I never went back to the Sundered Frontier to check out the other repeatable quests.

Next session will have to start with selling and brokering – I have never had my boxes so full since restarting the game.    Did NOT want to waste time doing that during double XP weekend.

Now, assuming I’ve done my time-zone math correctly, at 9:30 pm PST another 5x event begins in World of Tanks.    This one is apparently a thank-you for giving them 200,000 likes on Facebook.     For once, I was a pioneer in this regard.   I was one of their first one hundred likes; they didn’t even have a page when I went looking for one, and now they’ve got mega likes.    Wonder what’s coming when they get 300k ?

Weekend Activities

Tags

EQ2, World of Tanks

Taking advantage of the 2x XP promotion in EQ2 to the fullest.   Tezcatlipocca has hit 87, and Tlaloc has tradeskilled to 83.    It seems I’ve finished the solo quests though, in Stonebrunt, so the question is if I want to keep doing repeatable quests, or grind, or something else.   The gathering quest in the Sundered Frontier seems to give better XP than those in Stonebrunt, so I will probably travel over there and see if I can get those last few levels for Tez.

What a change in focus for me – I’m really not interested in racking up the quests anymore.     Just laser-beam-focused on hitting 90.

Apparently the special one-day sale (2/18) was quite screwed up.    Every player saw different items with the rebate tag, until they closed the sale temporarily.     Even worse for me, I could not figure out for the life of me if an item had a rebate or not.     Eventually a forum poster clued me in – the icon was changed.    Never thought to look there, I was reading descriptions.

They restarted it and I checked for the only thing I’m interested in at the moment, expansions, and no they are not rebate-able.    Some posters apparently bought expansions and thought they would be rebated.   Screw up of the first order.

I also did a session of World of Tanks last night, entered my premium code for one day free, and discovered that they were in fact giving 5x XP bonuses as well.     I missed that announcement, but I took full advantage after finding out it was there.     Have successfully unlocked the T-50-2; and upgraded turret ‘n gun for the Tiger.    It now has a T8 gun with 240 damage and an awesome 203 penetration.

I found out I have the ability to run the game in its highest resolution, 1680×1050.    And there’s no framerate slowdown.    How nice to play a game with such well done graphics and a killer framerate !

8 tanks on the screen at once.

Compare this to EQ2 where I have turned the graphics down to high performance, and I keep seeing a “graphical lag” spike when new objects get drawn.     True they are very different games, but still, it’s about the enjoyment of the graphic presentation.

Weekend Anticipation

Tags

EQ2, Star Trek Online, World of Tanks

Some interesting options for gaming this weekend.

World of Tanks is offering a free day of premium account access as a Valentine’s Week special.   Enter the code FREEHUGS to redeem – isn’t that cute ?        This will give a 24 hour period of 50% more XP and credits for each fight, so I am sure I will take advantage of it.     I am very close to unlocking the T-50-2, for instance.

And, available NOW until end-of-day Monday is an EQ2 Double XP weekend bonus, with a twist ; apparently you can get a rebate of at least half of your Station Cash back after purchasing an item.     This sounds like the typical “Let’s confuse the accountants” type thing where revenues are spiked up (Sales of items) but costs are suddenly increased (Rebates), but they only look at !! Revenue !   Up !.    Good for me at least, I cannot check right now, but I’m hopeful expansions are up for rebates.

Good timing as far as I am concerned; I would very much like to achieve a maximum level 90 character, but I’m not motivated at the moment.   Double XP, that’s a motivatation.

And Cryptic customer service is pretty non existant.   They still haven’t told me about Cryptic points and whether they work for both games, but I am thinking the answer is only for points purchased with dollars.   In which case my 800 cryptics earned for “loyalty” when playing Champions are not available in STO.    Good luck getting my money with this kind of service though.

Not much to report regarding my own (lack of) gaming during this week.

Time to account for virtual currency

Tags

EQ2, Game Currency, Nightclub City, Star Trek Online, World of Tanks

I had a little problem with Facebook which made me aware of something the MMO community should think about.     I was in Nightclub City and was buying new items.    I mis-clicked and accidentally purchased an item with Facebook credits, instead of game currency.     So I protested and have not received any response to two requests for help.    Looks like, I’m out of luck, and I’m stuck with the item.

One problem with a lot of facebook’s games is the sense I get that gameplay is partly built around getting you to misclick – one wrong move and they get paid.    That’s not the case with Nightclub City, but I still should get refunded for mistaken clicks.

So I’ve blown 22 facebook credits on a piece of junk.   Sucker !    If you don’t like it, don’t continue to play.    Well, I like the game a little bit more than I’m annoyed so I’m going to continue to play.    Then it occurs to me – perhaps they’ve refunded me my credits but never bothered to communicate with me.   So I clicked around and tried to find an account page for my facebook credits.

To my complete surprise, there isn’t one.    You can view your credit balance.  There’s a page for “recent purchases”, but they are describing exchanging dollars for credits, not credits for game goods.   All you get to see is your credit balance.    I have 38 of them, but I am not sure how I got to that number.   I don’t think I got refunded, but that’s it.

Seems that I had better have some offline method to track this stuff.   If that isn’t laughable I don’t know what is, what with Facebook now offering to remember my entire life beginning at birth if I’ll just put the information in there.    It’s called Timeline, and it’s going live soon for all facebookers.

Spurred by this annoying discovery, I next check in on the MMO space.     Same thing goes for EQ2 – I get my Station Cash balance displayed prominently, and a very thorough accounting of all my dollars paid to SOE.    No list of how I got to that Station Cash balance though.

Easy to read, and to buy, at least.

Next stop is Cryptic / Perfect World, where I run into the problem of being unable to log in to their website via Chrome.   The big blue “Login” button doesn’t do anything, no new webpage loads, even though the button press animation plays.     But it works in Explorer.   And again – no hint of how I got to this virtual currency balance.

That’s kind of funny.   Apparently my Cryptics are not shared within my account.   Either that, or I need to contact their support.

And don’t be surprised – same thing for World of Tanks.

Does any game company actually do this ?    You spent $10 for 25 widgets on 1/1/12.    You spent 5 widgets for a game item on 1/5/12.   You spent 5 widgets for a game item on 1/27/12.   Et cetera.

Why on earth is this important ?    As I find myself in the new world of doing business with many game companies, I simply forget how much virtual currency I am supposed to have.    It’s not much of a problem remembering one game’s currency, but many is a different story.    I could get hacked or griefed and not know it; there could be some problem with the company’s records and I wouldn’t know it either.    I really need some kind of statement showing what’s happened with them.    Since it’s not there looks like I need to make a new spreadsheet and track it, but I shouldn’t have to do that.

This is real money we’re talking about here, not game currency like platinum.     It needs to have more robust tracking.

Madness

Tags

EQ2

Tlaloc dings 79 in tradeskill levels, and even accomplished what seemed impossible – he RAN OUT OF VITALITY.    This spurred me to read up on that subject again, and it’s as I expected.    You gain vitality at a set rate.    I can expect him to have 100% vitality if I wait a week.

It was interesting doing the tradeskills with him though, as vitality does not behave like I would imagine.     The marker was at the 80% of level 78 mark.    So I thought, I would continue to finish writs until I used up all my tradeskill vitality.     Then something strange happened – the marker was suddenly at the “Into the next level” mark again.    I eventually figured out that the vitality is not taken into account for the writ reward XP, which just pushes the marker forward.    It’s a strange mechanic but I’m not going to complain.

Also had Tezcatlipocca continue repeated hunter quests and whatnot for a short period, and move up to 20% towards next level.

I am beginning to descend into free-ish MMO madness however, having reinstalled Champions Online, and LoTRO.    This brings the total number of games I’ve installed up to seven.    Not recently logged into, that’s still only EQ2, WOT, and STO.    Maybe I should keep it that way eh ?

Fantastic Fun

Tags

EQ2

Tezcatlipocca dinged 85, then 86.    I clearly waited far too long until exploring the Sundered Frontier. I found the City of Paineel and the new version of Toxxulia Forest, and thoroughly explored the Kerra Isle.     It looks like this is a zone designed in the model of Ykesha – a large amount of solo quests and dungeons sprinkled within.    I got started on completing the quests and followed several chains almost all the way through.

Then I discovered some Kerra foragers.    Now, these two have to be the laziest and wealthiest hunters I have ever seen.     All I need to do is wander around the area they inhabit, collect various bits and bobs, and I am rewarded with a staggering 7700ish xp and 20+ gold.    The quests are repeatable, and it seems there are many different versions.    I can finish some of the versions of this quest in 5 minutes.     Now I see where to grind out levels, at least for the moment.

The best part is, this was all accomplished over the weekend and was a gigantic amount of fun.   I was not exactly enjoying myself in Kunark, and thus I wasn’t moving Tez up as I wanted to do.     Now, just four more levels for bonuses and perhaps time to earn AA’s.

Tlaloc is also dinged 77 as a provisioner.   Seems my bigger problem with him will soon be, he’ll be out of vitality.   I sure don’t want to waste my time on characters without vitality.

It was great when the kids came into the computer room and started asking questions.    Just like that, they want to know what exactly is Dad doing on the computer.     My daughter has pretty firm opinions about mounts – I need to get out and buy a white horse.    She likes the raptor, and convinced me to start using it instead of the rhino.   Wouldn’t you know, they were even right – the Kerra isle is much easier to navigate if you just jump onto the mountains, which the rhino can’t do.    My boy is the shiny spotter – “Dad !   Glowie !” and just general chatterbox.

And because I’m not playing enough different games…

It’s fully patched and just waiting for me to enter it.

Rhythm

Tags

EQ2, Star Trek Online

Rhythm of the gaming day :

6:00 AM : Drag myself out of bed.

6:30 AM : Log in to Nightclub City.    Collect money and log out.    This in support of a roughly weekly upgrade for clubs.

8:00 AM : Work starts.    If the phone goes off, or during trips to the restroom, Words With Friends.    Sometime during the day, blog post.

5:30 PM : Home.    Mess around with the kids and homework.    They often want to talk about some Itouch game.

6:00 PM : Read online news, gaming, etc.

6:30 PM : Log into game – pauseable.      Have to be doing something where I can walk away after a few seconds.     EQ2 tradeskilling works, as does Star Trek Online.    Walk away as things happen and keep the kids moving through the family routine.

9:00 PM : Log into game of choice and commence serious playing.

Sleep : And hop into bed and log off.     This used to mean 2:00 AM, 1:00 AM, 4:00 AM.     Nowadays it might mean 10:30 PM and maximum 1:00 AM.

This is more like my ideal gaming weekday than something that happens every night.     Every night this week, yeah.    Sometimes non-gaming impinges, but that’s healthy for crying out loud 🙂 .

What’s missing here, clearly, is the sense of roleplay and immersion that I used to get from MMO’s.     Tezcatlipocca was ME !   I was going to go out, complete all the quests, despite the amount of game mechanics stacked against me, and I wrote with Tez’s viewpoint square in front of me.    Now,  I find myself writing and thinking much more as me, the consumer, the worldly gamer who has seen much and finds himself overwhelmed with choices.

I am still a firm achiever, clearly.    What do I remember about the crafting session last night ?   Tlaloc Ding 75 !    Another step towards the goal of 90 provisioner.     What did he make, and why was it fun ?     He made some succulent items, mmm, baked cactus.    But mostly what was fun was watching the XP bar move upwards.    The guild is already level 90, so it doesn’t matter much that I contributed guild XP.   See that, I did it again !    It’s all about making some progress.

Also played both of my Star Trek Online characters and got the new 2 year anniversay ship.   I wonder if I’ll ever be able to use it – it’s a level 44 item, but it is a free ship after playing a fun little short quest.      Hammer got up to level 10 and Lieutenant Commander finally, and managed to claim his free Constitution Class cruiser just before server shutdown at midnight.    He did it by trying out a Klingon random encounter.     I entered one of those little red encounter balls, and next thing I know I’m fighting 40 battlecruisers along with a large group of other players (6 ish ? ).     I got blown up three times but we eventually defeated them.    It was quite the fun ride !